The Nine Levels of Stability of Meditation

[jonesboy]

THE UNCOMMON INSTRUCTIONS

The realization of egolessness of self and phenomena is peace, which means it is a state of happiness beyond suffering. But the cultivation of this conventionally involves the development and affirmation of a logical certainty that emptiness or selflessness is the nature of things. It involves logically proving this. But this is a conceptual certainty, not direct experience. However, if it is cultivated, it will eventually lead to awakening, or Buddhahood. But because one is attempting to strengthen a conceptual certainty, and because it is somewhat indirect, it was taught by the Buddha that the path of the sutras takes three periods of innumerable eons during which one must ceaselessly gather the accumulations in order to attain Buddhahood.

Now the accumulation of virtue was taught by the Buddha, but elsewhere the Buddha taught that the Vajrayana path can lead to that same Buddhahood in one lifetime.

In the Vajrayana we meditate upon that which is most important, which is the nature of our mind because it is the mind creates pleasure and pain, it is the mind that gives rise to experience, it is the mind that experiences everything. It is the mind that generates disturbing emotions, it is the mind that generates faith and devotion. So the mind is most important. Therefore in Vajrayana, in the practice of Mahamudra, we look at the nature of mind rather than attempting to look at the nature of appearances.

Another reason for directly looking at mind is that it is very difficult to experience the emptiness of external appearances, but it is not difficult to directly experience the emptiness of the mind. The mind has always been obviously empty, but it is just that we’ve never looked at it. So, because the nature of the mind is easier to recognize and more beneficial to realize, it is the object of meditation in Mahamudra.

[jonesboy]

LOOKING AT THE MIND

To discover the emptiness of mind, you begin by taking the Seven Dharmas of Vairocana posture. You begin by practicing Shamatha, which is to say you let thoughts dissolve until finally your mind comes to rest, and you experience stillness. Now, even in the midst of stillness, your mind still has a cognitive capacity, it still has awareness, so you will recognize the stillness. You will actually experience it, and that is the state of Shamatha. Then you look to see exactly what this stillness consists of, that is, what it means to say my mind is at rest. If you look, then the clarity or lucidity that is there will emerge. And you can experience what your mind is, and what your mind is like, and what your mind is doing, without needing to infer by deduction. Because you can simply, directly experience your own mind, nothing about it has to be deduced or inferred in any way.

So within that state of Shamatha, you look at your mind, and you look to try to see what is resting. By saying your mind is at rest, we mean that it is free of thought. If the mind has some kind of substantial existence; then it must be at rest in some particular way in some particular location. If the mind is something, then it will be at rest somewhere. For example, if a car is parked, we can say this car is parked in this place.

But when your mind is at rest or parked, you can’t find it anywhere. You don’t find anything placed anywhere. Even if you try to go through the parts of your body to find where your mind is located, or where your mind is at rest when you’re not thinking, you won’t find it, no matter how finely you divide your body.

In that way, when you meditate on the nature of your mind, you don’t find the mind anywhere. Not finding anything, you initially think that you have somehow failed. Either you misunderstood how to look, or you just haven’t looked enough. But in fact this is not true. The reason you didn’t find anything is that the nature of your mind is utter insubstantiality, which is why, according to the Buddha, it is empty. To thoroughly comprehend this emptiness, we need to experience this directly in meditation.

The mind’s emptiness is not a mere absence of substance, but it is a vast openness, which means that while the mind is empty of substance, the mind still knows and experiences. While the mind experiences, it knows, it is empty. Although it is empty, it experiences. Therefore, the way the mind exists is often referred to as the unity of luminosity and emptiness, which is to say simply that the mind can know, and yet is empty. As this innate luminosity (which is the defining characteristic of mind) increases through the practice of meditation, it eventually becomes wisdom, and finally it becomes wisdom of the true nature of phenomena and the wisdom of the variety of phenomena. But the nature of this wisdom itself is emptiness. Therefore the nature of mind is also called the unity of emptiness and wisdom. So emptiness is not a voidness like the voidness of space.

[jonesboy]

LOOKING AT THOUGHTS

When you meditate on mind’s true nature or essence, you will discover the nature of your own mind. But while this is going on, thoughts will continue to arise: positive thoughts, negative thoughts, and neutral thoughts. When these thoughts arise, you will think that something has gone wrong with your meditation. But rather than rejecting a thought and attempting to suppress it in some way, simply look at the nature of the thought, looking directly at the thought itself and try to see where the thought has come from.

Does thought have a location or a substance so it won’t be hidden from you? But when you look for the location and substance of thought, you don’t find anything. Even when you look to see how the thought arose, you can’t say that the thought arose gradually or suddenly. You don’t find anything at all.

Although we tend to regard thoughts as a problem for meditation, they are not a problem in and of themselves, because their nature is the same as the nature of mind. Their nature is that same emptiness: that absence of location, or origination, or substance. Therefore thoughts in themselves are not inherently harmful.

While we are doing this, it often seems as though our mind and thoughts are two entirely different things. But if we look at them directly, we’ll see that they have exactly the same nature. As long as we regard them as different and want our mind to be at a state of stillness, free from thoughts, the thoughts will actually obstruct the practice of meditation. But once we recognize that thoughts and mind have the same nature, we see that this is no longer the case.

While we often tend to feel that we need to get rid of thoughts, as though thoughts are thieves, or our enemies, in fact thoughts are not a problem. When we are meditating and a thought arises, if we look at its nature, we see its nature, which is the nature of our mind. And if a thought does not arise, and we look directly at the nature of our mind, we see that same nature. So the arising or non-arising of thought is not an issue in the practice of Vipashyana meditation.

This is really the difference between Shamatha and Vipashyana. With Vipashyana there is an intelligence or prajna present, which is the recognition in direct experience of this nature of mind. That recognition is itself Vipashyana. Therefore the meditation on egolessness of self that was taught by the Buddha really comes down to this.

When we determine with direct experience that the mind has no substantial characteristics, we then lose our incorrect belief of a self. All the benefits which result from meditation on emptiness come from this. The emptiness on which we meditate is not something far away or something requiring great theory or logic. It is the insubstantiality of our own mind. When we look at our mind, we discover using with direct experience that there is no substantial entity to be apprehended, and that is the direct experience of emptiness.

[jonesboy]

Please forgive the long posts..

This is an example of a tradition teaching Buddhism.

A step by step process of one testing out the teachings and directly experiencing the truth the Buddha taught.

There are more teachings beyond the ones posted here.

The practices posted here would take someone from no experience to the Witness to experiencing emptiness.

I also hope this shines a light for some on what Buddhism is beyond just the sutras..

All the best,

Tom

[Serrao]

Is it conditioning that conceals the witness?

Does the witness have intelligence?

Is the state of the witness without ego?

[jonesboy]

Originally Posted by Serrao

Is it conditioning that conceals the witness?

Does the witness have intelligence?

Is the state of the witness without ego?

The Witness is a sign of inner silence.

I know it sounds funny to say it has to do with silence when one is still experiencing thoughts like in the Witness but it is true.

Most people have anywhere between 6-8 thoughts going at any one time. The Witness occurs because now you are lowering that number and have developed enough silence to now observe them instead of being caught up in them.

The next step like in the article is to realize you and thoughts are the same thing... Energy.

If you are able to feel the flow of the thoughts reside in them, just being and experience the movement or better still be the movement.

At this point you are still you but you are now beginning to experience seperation from emotion which can be deep for some and that is called dispassion. At times that can be confusing but it is just a phase.

You still have ego, but you have taken the first step to freedom :)